A computer operating system, application, service, or other program may be developed for use in more than one geographic region. Such a program may communicate with its users through text displayed on a user interface (UI). To provide a positive user experience, the program may be configured to communicate in the user's own language. In some examples, a program preparing to present communication to a user will pass an argument to a UI procedure, the argument specifying the content of the communication. The procedure, aware of the user's language preference and/or the region in which the program is being used, returns a pointer to the specified content in the appropriate language. The program then may direct communication in the user's language to the appropriate UI element, such as a dialog box on a display monitor.
In the above scenario, the pointer may point to a location in a resource file accessible to the UI procedure. The resource file may be prepared with assistance from an expert in the user's language, so that the communication is formulated with correct grammar, spelling, and punctuation.